Filner hasn't identified Paris trip funding

San Diego Mayor Bob Filner on June 28 met with reporters who were curious to know, among other things, who paid for his trip to France earlier that week.

He declined to say.

“The group that ran the rally has a nonprofit arm and they’re giving me the full rundown in the next day or two,” Filner said. “I’d give you a name but it might be a word or two off so I want to wait until I see it in writing.”

U-T Watchdog has followed up with repeated requests for the name of the nonprofit, and nothing has been forthcoming.

Filner said his flight, meals and lodging were paid by the unnamed 501(c)(3) tied to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which organized the group rally where Filner gave a speech in Villepinte, near Paris.

While in France, Filner also visited the city of Lille to discuss the city’s work in the area of climate control and renewable energy. Filner said the government of Lille paid for the travel inside France to and from that city.

His fiancée, who has since announced the couple’s breakup, accompanied him and paid her own way, Filner said during the news conference.

Questions are also still swirling around the City Council about Filner’s trip.

“This is about transparency,” Councilman Kevin Faulconer said Tuesday. “San Diegans deserve to know who paid for Mayor Filner's trip to France, what he was doing there and how it actually benefitted San Diegans.”

Filner said this was the third time he’s attended the annual event and his acceptance of the travel gift was permissible under the law.

Filner was accompanied by a San Diego police security detail. Police Chief William Lansdowne said he insisted on the security presence to protect the mayor. The chief said the trip cost more than $10,000 and would be paid for out of the police budget -- but would not say exactly how much more than $10,000 it was.

Filner has previously accepted travel from groups that are part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He went to Paris in June 2011, as a member of Congress. He also took a similar trip in June of 2007, federal records show.

His 2011 trip cost $6,589 and was paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, a group tied to the Mujahideen-e Khalq or MEK, the militant — and largest — arm of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The U.S. State Department removed the MEK from the foreign terrorist organizations list last year.

Filner’s 2011 trip included a first class flight and a stay at a Marriott. Legistorm, a nonpartisan Washington DC-based organization that compiles information about Congress, including Congressional travel, noted, “This trip included unusually expensive hotel charges.”

The 2007 trip to France, also paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, cost $7,949. The plane ticket in that case was business class.

Colorado’s Iranian American Community is not listed as a nonprofit by the Internal Revenue Service and officials with the organization said they did not pay for Filner’s trip this time.

During the mayoral campaign last year, Filner was criticized for accepting 16 free trips as a congressman, totaling $40,000. U-T Watchdog determined his travel was at the median for the county’s congressional delegation, that is, third highest out of five legislators.

He said at the time, “I plead guilty to doing my job as a congressman, informing myself about world issues, building relationships with world leaders and fighting for human rights.”

Filner is not alone in accepting travel from the Iranian groups. Others who have gone include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.

In large part, the trips were part of a lobbying campaign to remove the MEK from the U.S. State Department’s foreign terrorist organizations list. In a speech to the group, Filner compared their plight to the U.S. civil rights movement.

“This will happen,” Filner said in a speech to the group in 2011. “This will happen. The laws, the facts, are on our side.”